Wednesday, November 10, 2004

I'm In Like Flynn

Last night I did my first bit of real work towards producing a commercial game product. I'm taking my Occult Crimes Taskforce concept and putting it into BESM d20 terms. So far all I've got are initial notes for a new class ("The Fed") but it's something, by golly. It's finally clicked for me that the big powers chapter combines with the section that deconstructs the D&D classes to produce a nifty class-building system. It's not necessarily suitable for anything outside the scope of BESM d20, but it ought to work just dandy within its own context. After the Fed is done, I think I'll need a Cyborg, a Witch, and a Psychic.

Set aside what little actual writing I've done for the moment, I've also had some nifty ideas for making OCT the wacky comedy romp I envision by altering the combat rules. Cynthia Celeste Miller's Cartoon Action Hour has been some inspiration here, as has the old classic Ghostbusters rpg. Also, I think I'm going to take a look at porting Action Points over to BESM d20. That would be my first d20 cross-pollination idea. Are you proud of me, Pat?

Here's another idea that's come out of tinkering with BESM d20. For five years now I've been hesitant to build my own monsters in D&D 3E because I don't know how to assign a challenge rating. What if all monsters had BESM d20 classes? You could have a a generic Monster class (for miscellaneous goon squad types), and then more specific stuff like a Dragon Class or a Beholderkin class or an Undead class. If you need to customize a critter past the monster classes available, just add enough levels of Adventurer to get the points needed to buy the goodies you want. Monsters would be constructed very differently under this system, but I think it would help me out tremendously.

1 comment:

  1. As there's a d20 FBI supp. out, I'd recommend "The Agent" as a more generic class title.

    In the Monster Manual, there's a breakdown of saves/BAB for the monster classes in regards to advancement. I think by restricting the bonus feats to relevant ones, and setting up relevant abilities as class traits, ala the talent trees in d20 modern, you could be well on the way. Thanks for the OGL Steampunk, BTW, because their Antelopeman/halfGhost/Sir Varney classes have a trait/character point system that could bolster the framework too.

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